I travelled to Greenbelt hoping that I would be met by a group of swivel-eyed believers, each tremulously attesting to the majesty of some revelation that just happened to be at hand. So when within moments of my arrival the words "JESUS DIED FOR ME! I'VE GOT TO BELIEVE IN GOD!" came bellowing from the main stage, I allowed myself a moment of fist-clenching pleasure; but the performer's simulated afflatus had been met by a rustle of assent so cringe-makingly mild as to embarrass even me. Greenbelt was not, then, going to yield a glut of faith-based crackpots; hope abandoned. But I had thought that it would bring some controversy.

I had thought as much because I was in attendance to cover a speaking event of Peter Tatchell's. I knew Peter to be a formidable critic of the church's continued offences against fundamental human rights, and I wanted to see how a predominantly Christian audience would receive him. Well, when not long after midnight he strode on to the stage, he did so to a storm of applause: "Tell it like it is, Peter!"

In the event it seemed that the audience was being told not so much "how it is" as "how you want it to be". Talking of the Christian revival of homophobia in a number of African countries (there are attempts afoot in Uganda to make repeated convictions for homosexuality punishable by death), Peter adduced the figure of Bishop Christopher Senyonjo, who for many years has spoken out against Uganda's treatment of homosexuals. For these actions Bishop Senyonjo has, through the influence of Rowan Williams and his allies in Uganda, been forced out of the church and robbed of his pension.

Peter regards this as an act for which Williams has "direct personal responsibility", and in the peroration to his critique of the archbishop he voiced the opinion that "discrimination against gay people is not a Christian value". The patent untruth of this statement did not prevent its being met with another, almighty round of applause. This was dispiriting. It does not require Calvin to point out that the Bible contains numerous warrants for the persecution of homosexuals, and there is nothing about Rowan Williams's position, or the position of his Ugandan allies, that makes it less Christian than the "progressive" position of Bishop Senyonjo. Indeed, in this very important issue Williams and his allies are alone in having scripture on their side.

Peter made a number of remarks in this vein, and when I met up with him the following day to interview him about his involvement with the Protest the Pope campaign, I asked him about the previous evening's event and about why he had not spoken about the mandates for the abuse of human rights with which the Bible is replete. His response was that Jesus never recommended the persecution of homosexuals; that Christianity is really about the philosophy of love and compassion taught by Jesus; and that he didn't want to alienate a room full of people who were sympathetic to establishing equality of human rights.

Perhaps I am over-sensitive, but it seems rather insulting to assume that your audience is so tenuously attached to the struggle for equality that an attack on their religion will send them skidding back into a state of barbarism; and anyway, such an attack might get people to think about the morality of their own systems of belief, about where morality comes from and what warrants (if any) it requires. Yes, Christianity might scare people into adopting one of its few moral precepts; but the same impulse might just as easily incite those people to follow injunctions of the most atrocious kind, and to think of those injunctions as moral because they come burnished with the cheap lustre of divine authority.

Indeed, as Peter's talk made clear, such injunctions are being followed, in Africa and elsewhere, as I write. Is it that the figures who are following these mandates are simply too literal-minded to realise that their holy books have shifted, in the pertinent pages, into their "metaphorical" mode? Perhaps the offending believers have not realised that the supposedly compassionate teachings of Christ trump all of the other teachings of the Bible (forget for a moment that it is Christ who establishes the doctrine of eternal torture).

The most sophisticated theologians will not address this matter without being evasive or dishonest, or without embracing the most sordid kinds of casuistry. That makes the subject the responsibility of our writers and campaigners. It is for this reason that I am sorry that Peter did not take the opportunity to bring to Greenbelt the controversy I had expected. For to do so would have been to ask questions of a system of belief that asks us to be slaves, and invites us to participate in the enslavement of others.